Willow in Bloom (13 page)

“Oh, well, if there'll be ice cream…” she joked, as if that were the selling point when, in fact, the only selling point she needed was Tyler himself.

“So you'll come?”

“You'll have to be the last delivery of the day,” she warned.

“I'm fine with that,” he assured her, looking deep into her eyes.

“Then I guess I'll be there,” Willow said, her voice suddenly soft and breathy.

Tyler kissed her again then, a tender kiss that was still so sexy it made her sparkle inside. But he left it at that one last kiss, squeezed her hand and then let himself out and closed the screen between them before he said, “Good night.”

“See you tomorrow.”

He only nodded in response, but she thought he took a last glance at her chest while he was at it.

It delighted her no end to think of sending him away longing for her, and she couldn't suppress the smile on her face as she watched him go down the stairs.

But when she found herself in bed shortly afterward the tables were turned.

Because as she lay there in the dark, she remembered all too well what it had felt like to have his hands on her bare, ultrasensitive breasts.

And she discovered that she had a potent longing of her own to wrestle with.

A longing for Tyler to be lying there with her.

Kissing her again.

Touching her again.

Making love to her again.

Just the way he had in Tulsa…

M
ondays were always hectic at the store, and to make matters worse, Carl was grumpy. It was Willow's fault. First thing in the morning she'd asked him if he would do the delivery to Tyler after closing. Carl was not happy to make any delivery himself, and he certainly wasn't thrilled to do one that late in the day. But Willow couldn't get away before closing time, and she didn't want to entrust the delivery truck to their high school driver overnight. So that left Carl, who agreed to do it, but not without grumbling.

Any other time Willow would have lost patience with it. But as it was, she was too glad that Tyler wanted to see her to care, so she just endured the grumbling.

When Carl began to load the truck at six she went upstairs to change. She was in a hurry, but still managed a quick shower before she put on the outfit she'd decided on earlier, when she'd been struggling to get down a piece of dry toast to help the morning sickness.

She didn't want to look as if she'd done anything but come from work, so she opted for her favorite blue jeans and the new white wrap shirt that was held together by one simple tie at the right side of her waist. She thought the blouse softened and feminized the blue jeans, but still didn't make it seem as if she'd taken any special pains just to make a feed delivery.

She did put on blush and mascara, though, and she twisted her hair into a roll at her crown, held there with the chopsticks, while spiky ends stuck out every which way.

When she judged herself presentable, she slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and rushed out of her bedroom.

But she got only as far as the living room before she stopped short.

Bram was sitting on her sofa.

“I didn't know you were here,” she said, startled.

Bram had his feet on her coffee table, his arms stretched along the top of the back cushion, and the expression on his face was no happier than Carl's had been through the last eight hours.

“Carl said you were up here getting ready to deliver feed with him,” Bram said, as if he were accusing her of a crime.

Willow had expected at least one of her brothers to show up today to grill her over Tyler and his presence at the barbecue the previous evening. When that hadn't happened she'd hoped they might have just accepted it and opted to leave her alone about it.

She should have known better.

“Carl must be about loaded up by now,” she said, hinting that she didn't want this to take long.

But Bram ignored the hint. He just stared at her and said, “So are you dating this Chadwick guy?”

Willow felt the tension build in her, but she tried to tamp it down. She also made a quick decision not to deny too much. After all, she'd wanted the ice broken between her brothers and Tyler, she'd wanted to lay some groundwork, and to pretend she and Tyler were merely friends now would not aid that cause.

With that in mind, she said, “I've seen him a couple of times and I'm getting to know him a little.” Okay, so that wasn't an outright admission that they were
dating,
but it was still something.

It just didn't fool her brother.

“Sounds like dating to me.”

So much for soft-pedaling.

Still, Willow returned Bram's stare without backing down.

“You like this guy?” her brother asked, as if he couldn't believe it.

Again Willow held her ground. “He's nice. He's interesting. He's fun to be with. He's—”

“You like him.”

“There's nothing wrong with that, Bram.”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On a lot of things,” her brother said vaguely. But apparently he didn't want to expound on it, because then he said, “Carl says that he has to work late just so he can deliver you to this guy along with the feed order.”

Maybe she shouldn't have had so much patience with Carl's attitude.

“Carl doesn't have any business complaining to you. I
asked
him to do this, I didn't order him to, and he agreed. Plus I'm paying him double time.”

“To deliver you to Chadwick.”

“To deliver Tyler's order to him. We've made after-hours deliveries before. It just so happens that I'm going along because I have dinner plans with Tyler and this kills two birds with one stone. It's no big deal.”

“I don't know about this, Will,” her brother said with a solemn shake of his head. And then, as if he just couldn't resist telling her what was wrong with liking Tyler, after all, he said, “The guy just moved to town. We don't know him or anything about him. He could have wives and kids in six other states.”

“He doesn't.”

“How can you be sure? Because he told you he doesn't?”

“He doesn't.”

“We just don't want to see you get in over your head with somebody and get hurt.”

Too late for the getting-in-over-her-head part. Maybe for the getting-hurt part, too, if things didn't pan out.

But she didn't say that.

She said, “
We
being you and Ashe and Logan and Jared.”

“Who else?”

Willow took a deep breath, then sighed, making an effort to hold on to her temper. “Look, I know you guys mean well. I know you care about me and you think you need to look out for me and protect me, but I'm going to say this one more time—I'm a big girl, Bram. I can take care of myself. You and Ashe and Jared and Logan have to stop. If I need your help, I'll let you know. I'll scream it from the rooftop. But unless I do that, please, please, please stop this big brother routine you guys have always done. Especially with other guys. Or I'm liable to end up your poor, lonely, pitiful spinster sister who comes to holiday dinners wearing Fruit Loop jewelry.”

That made him smile in spite of himself. “Fruit Loop jewelry?”

“That part got through to you, but you don't care about the poor, lonely, pitiful spinster part?”

“Of course I care about it. But that's not going to be you.”

“How isn't it going to be me if you and Jared and Ashe and Logan scare off any guy who looks twice at
me the way you've always done? I'm not a kid anymore, Bram. I'm a full-grown woman and I brought a perfectly nice man to a barbecue yesterday and my brothers treated him like he had a contagious disease he was about to infect me with. You have someone—you have Jenna. Jared has Kerry. Before long Ashe and Logan will have women in their lives. But what will I have if my brothers keep standing as a barrier between me and anyone of the opposite sex?”

Bram's expression had wrinkled up into a frown again, this one darker than the last one. “Have you been talking to Jenna about this?”

“Why? Because she said the same thing? No, I haven't been talking to Jenna about this. I don't have to talk to anyone about this to feel the way I do. I love you guys, but sometimes…sometimes you smother me.”

For a long moment Bram stared at her with that familiar scowl, and she wasn't too sure she hadn't said too much. That she hadn't hurt his feelings or made him mad.

But then he took a deep breath of his own and exhaled slowly. “So you want me—us—to butt out, is that it?”

“Butt out and be nice to people of the male persuasion who I might happen to bring around or be with when you meet me on the street. Is that asking so much?”

“Yes,” he said frankly. But then he added, “I guess we could try, though. A little. Except if we see you
doing something we know is stupid. Then we'll have to butt in.”

Too late for that, too. She'd already done the most stupid thing she could have done.

But she didn't say that, either.

Instead she said, “All I'm asking at the moment is that you be polite and friendly to Tyler. I'm not doing anything stupid with him right now, I'm just getting to know him and letting him get to know me. No big deal.”

Bram didn't look convinced.

But he did finally pull his feet off the coffee table and stand.

“You're a big deal to us,” he said seriously.

“Well, I don't want to be.”

“And we're never going to stop looking out for you. But maybe we could back off some. Give you a little space with this guy, if that's what you really want.”

“That's what I really want.”

“But we'll still be watching.”

Willow rolled her eyes and tried to be happy for even a small victory. “Of course you will be.”

 

Tyler was waiting for Willow and the delivery when they arrived at his ranch. He was dressed in work clothes that he'd obviously been in since morning, because his jeans and his chambray shirt were soiled, and his face was shadowed with a full day's growth of beard.

The fact that he looked good to her in spite of it all let Willow know she was in trouble with this man. Well, more trouble than being pregnant by him.

But she tried not to think about the fact that even with him sweaty and dust-covered and bewhiskered, she could still have jumped his bones without a qualm.

Don't move too fast,
she told herself, recalling her own comment to him the night before, when she'd stopped him before they'd actually made love.

She knew it was good advice and that she needed to follow it. But one look at him was enough to do her in, and watching him hoist feed sacks out of the back of the truck alongside Carl, watching his impressive muscles tensing under the weight, watching his tight derriere as he bent over to pile the sacks inside the big red barn was enough to weaken her knees and her will at once.

“She used to help with this,” Carl pointed out crankily as they worked, hinting for her to lend a hand the way she would have several months earlier.

But Tyler said, “I wouldn't let her even if she wanted to,” and that just left Carl to more grumbling.

Grumbling that continued right up until they were finished and Carl got back behind the wheel to drive off without so much as a goodbye to either of them.

But if Tyler noticed, he didn't seem to care. He removed his work gloves and then his cowboy hat, wiping dampness from his brow with the back of his arm and settling his gaze on Willow as if for the first time.

“Hi,” he said in a tone that held an intimacy she was beginning to believe he reserved for her alone.

“Hi,” she answered the same way.

“Sorry about this,” he apologized, nodding down at himself to let her know he was referring to the way he looked. “I didn't want to clean up and then get all dusty from the feed sacks again so I figured I'd have to wait to shower. Do you mind?”

“No,” she answered, not telling him she actually liked him all rugged and rustic and masculine.

“I promise I won't take long. And I made you fresh squeezed lemonade for the wait.”

“Sounds good.”

Tyler motioned toward the house, and that was where they headed. He held the back door open for her when they reached it, following her up the three steps into the mud room, where he hung his hat on a hook just inside the door. Then he washed his hands in the laundry basin and they went into the kitchen.

He filled two glasses with ice and lemonade from a pitcher in the refrigerator, handing her one and then nearly guzzling his before he said, “Make yourself at home. Turn on the television or the radio if you want. Or sit on the porch swing—it's shaded at this time of day and usually catches a breeze. Or whatever you feel like doing. I'll be back before you can miss me.”

She doubted that, but she said, “Don't rush. I'll be fine.”

She watched him go, and wondered at herself for thinking he even looked great with hat-hair.

But then he was gone and she was left to her own devices.

Sitting on the porch swing had been the most appealing of his suggestions, so Willow headed for the front of the house.

But halfway through the living room the fireplace mantel caught her eye. Unlike when she'd been there previously, it was no longer bare, but was now lined with framed photographs. She made a detour to be nosy.

There were pictures of a couple on their wedding day, and from the dated look of it and the resemblance between Tyler and both the bride and the groom, Willow had no doubt it was a portrait of his parents.

There were a few other family photographs of vacations and horseplay, of graduations and other school events. One snapshot was obviously taken at Christmas, of Tyler and his brother in footed pajamas.

There were also pictures that chronicled Tyler's and his brother's careers in rodeo.

It was easy to tell Brick was Tyler's brother because they looked so much alike, too. But Willow thought Tyler was the more handsome. There were shots of them riding bucking broncos and roping calves. There were photos of them celebrating victories with a wave of a hat in the air, with grins from ear to ear, with belt buckles held as trophies.

Tyler had loved what he'd done for a living before coming to Black Arrow. Before meeting her in Tulsa and taking that last ride. If he hadn't already told her
that she would only have had to look at those photographs to know.

And yet he seemed to have accepted the ending of it all with aplomb. With grace and good humor.

She thought that said a lot about him. About the kind of man he was. A lot that she liked.

And she wondered whether, if and when she told him about the baby she was carrying, he would react the same way. If, once the shock had passed, he would accept it and adapt. Embrace it the way he appeared to have embraced his new life here.

She hoped so.

But that was really all she could do—hope. Because while somewhere in his thinking he had to have always known his rodeo days would come to an end, he wasn't likely to have planned for a woman he didn't even remember having met announcing she was pregnant with his child.

And there was no way to gauge how anyone would react to that.

Fear caused Willow to press a protective hand to her stomach, as if to shield her unborn baby from any negative response. And she couldn't help wondering if she would ever find the courage to actually tell Tyler at all.